Five letters to Reginald Hibbert Tupper from three old friends dating from his days in Naval training, who are at this time serving officers in the British Navy. The letters relate to British and German naval engagements in the First World War and illustrate the naval officer's first hand experience of battle at sea and its personal effects.

Arrangement

Arranged according to author

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Language

English

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Reginald Hibbert Tupper (1893-1972) was the sixth son of Charles H. Tupper. Born in Ottawa, he spent his childhood in Vancouver before being sent, at the age of 11, to the Royal Navy prep school at Osborne, Isle of Wight. Subsequently, he attended Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, where he contracted rheumatic fever and was invalided out. Early in 1912, completely recovered, he returned to Vancouver and enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders Militia Battalion. At the outbreak of war, he took a commission as a lieutenant in the 16th Battalion Canadian Scottish but was seriously wounded by shrapnel at the second Battle of Ypres in 1915. It was whilst in hospital that he received these five letters from his old comrades. Tupper returned to Vancouver as a Major in command of reinforcement and depot regiments and married on September 27 1916; after the war he became a lawyer.

This material was purchased with the book 'The Fighting at Jutland. The Personal Experiences of Sixty Officers and Men of the British Fleet' (1921). The recipient of the book was either Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper (1856-1927) or possibly his son of the same name, bookplate of Reginald Hibbert Tupper.